However, the exact limit of ABV to consider a drink a session beer is up for debate.

“Different people have different personal definitions,” says Cameron Read, general manager of The Greenville Beer Exchange. “Almost every beer culture has its own kind of idea of a session beer, though they might call it something different.”

What is for certain, Read says, is that the British and Americans have a different standard.

The session term originated in England, where beers were consumed in “sessions” at the pub, and low ABV drinks were considered an alternative to water.

You could call it a conversational, social beer. And not necessarily a lighter seasonal beer, Read says, as a low ABV nut brown ale could be enjoyed by a wintertime fire.

In England, the widely accepted ABV limit for a beer to be termed session is 4 percent or below, Read says.

Americans, however, have adopted the term in our way — and, in American fashion, by our own definition.

Session beers in America are generally defined somewhere between 4.5 and 5 percent, as beers with much lower ABV aren’t as easy to find.

Even that isn’t a bright line: Full Sail named its session beer simply “Session.” The ABV is 5.1 percent.

Of course, you could call an American beer “sessionable.” A fair compromise for the craft beer purist? Perhaps.

Then there’s the so-called “lawnmower” beer — less conversation, more relief by yourself after a hot day mowing the lawn. It also has been called the “poolside beer,” Thomas Creek assistant brewer Zach Newton says.

“That’s more of an old-fart terminology,” Newton says. “You might hear that floating around among a few of the cotton tops still around the industry. It’s a hot day. You want something more hydrating than inebriating.”